In 1867 the women of Europe and America, from the thrones to the maid-servants, adopted the fashion of wearing a pad made of false hair behind their head, utterly destroying its natural proportions. The microscope showed that the hair employed for these uglies abounded in a pediculous insect called a gregarine (or little herding animal), from the Latin grex (a herd). The nests on the filaments of hair resemble those of spiders and silkworms, and the object used to form one of the exhibits in microscópical soirées.